Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Who Made Mick Philpott?

It's a bit like global warming you can't pin any particular storm on the phenomenon but it isn't unreasonable to say that it makes them more likely. The way our welfare state along with the criminal justice system work does make it more likely that sociopath's can thrive.

When he was convicted of the premeditated attempted murder of a girlfriend who rejected him he was released from prison after just three years. A functional criminal justice system should not let a man who does that out of prison before he is even 25.

When he decided to not to work the welfare system provided for him. When he decided not to have a vast number of children that he could not support, the welfare system picked up the slack and effectively rewarded him with an income of £60000 a year for this antisocial behaviour.

The women he preyed on and controlled seem to have mostly been the results of broken homes, girls who have been failed by social services.

There will always be bad people, but a parasite like Philpott could not have thrived without a system that is broken.

I think the general consensus is that Philpott is an arrogant controlling, evil man and would have been even if he had not been on welfare.

Welfare did not help Philpott's behaviour and probably re-enforced his belief that the world owed him a living. On this basis it is right to ask questions about the benefits we pay to some citizen's. We should not use this case as an excuse to pull the rug from under some vulnerable people but at the same time we need to understand how this extreme case could have been tackled earlier.